THE NEW SCHOOL-TEACHER IN BEAR CANYON
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Samuel Wilson, stretching his boot-clad legs to their fullest extent, and twirling his thumbs thoughtfully, “yes, sir, we’ve got to have a teacher up in Bear Canyon. There ain’t a bit o’ use in waitin’ a week for that teacher from Sheridan. Come December, there’ll be snow, and school not out. Accordin’ to my judgment, and I’m the chief trustee o’ this district, it’s best to get some one to teach a week until the one we’ve hired gets here. I stopped at Ben Jarvis’ place on my way down here, and he agreed with me. Says he, ‘Sam, there’d ought to be one out o’ that crowd o’ ladies over to Hunter’s who could keep school a week. They’re all raised around Boston, folks tell me. Now you go along over, and see.’ And I said I would. What do you think, John? Ain’t there a likely one among ’em? If Virginia didn’t know the 203 children so well, I’d be for choosin’ her. But a stranger’s what we want. That school seems to need a stranger ’bout every term.”
“That’s just the difficulty,” said Mr. Hunter. “It is a hard school, and these girls aren’t used to schools out here. The girl I am thinking of is Mary Williams, but she’s young—only eighteen. I shouldn’t even consider her if she hadn’t said the other day that she’d like to try teaching in that little school-house up the canyon. Of course ’twould be only for a week. They’re going back East in a little more than two.”
“Her age ain’t nothin’ against her,” reassured Mr. Wilson. “Remember Eben Judd’s girl who kept the school last spring? She was only seventeen, and she could thrash the biggest boy there! Supposin’ you let me talk with this girl if she’s around. Seems to me twenty dollars a week is mighty easy money for just keepin’ school and givin’ out things you’ve got in your head a’ready!”
Mr. Hunter, half-sorry that he had even considered the matter, went in search of Mary, while Mr. Samuel Wilson stretched his legs even farther 204 across the floor, re-lit his old corn-cob pipe, and settled himself more comfortably in his chair. He did not rise when Mary, forewarned but very eager, came into the room a few minutes later, but he did remove his pipe. Then he stated his errand, while Mary, feeling very professional, listened with the deference due Mr. Wilson’s position as chief trustee of the Bear Canyon District.
“What we want,” concluded the chief trustee, with a wave of his hand, after he had explained all the difficulties and expatiated on all the joys of the Bear Canyon school, “what we want is a teacher who can start things right. A heap depends on the startin’ things have in this world, I’ve noticed. Now you look like a spunky young lady. Ain’t afraid o’ big boys, are you?”
Mary, with the memory of Eben Judd’s daughter and the biggest boy fresh in her mind, hesitated. Bear Canyon might offer problems too big for her inexperienced hands. Then she summoned an extra amount of dignity.
“It surely isn’t necessary to thrash them, Mr. Wilson, if you can get along with them some other 205 way. No, I’m not at all afraid of them. Are there many big ones?”
Mr. Wilson considered for a moment. No, there were not many. Ben Jarvis’ big boy Allan was the worst, and even he wasn’t bad if he had enough to do. The trouble was he led all the others, and if he once got “contrary,” trouble arose. Mary inwardly resolved that he should not get “contrary.”
“Now up here in Bear Canyon,” Mr. Wilson further remarked, “we’re strong on figurin’. How are you on arithmetic?”
Mary’s heart fell. Dismal visions of cube root and compound proportion came to torment her. Her ship, sailing smoothly but a moment since, had apparently struck a reef. Then a never-failing imagination came to her rescue. She saw Priscilla solving her problems in the evening at the table.
“Arithmetic isn’t exactly my specialty, Mr. Wilson,” she said brightly. “That is, I don’t love it as I do other studies; but I assure you I shall be quite able to teach it.”
The chief trustee rose from his seat, knocked the 206 ashes from his pipe into the fire-place, and took his hat.
“I guess you’re hired for the week, then,” said he, “at twenty dollars. I’ll stop in at Ben Jarvis’ on my way home and tell him. School begins Monday morning at nine. I may drop in myself durin’ the week to see how things is goin’. Good-mornin’.”
Mary stood in the middle of the room, paying no heed to the curious voices which called her from the porch. She saw the chief trustee ride past the window on his way to tell Ben Jarvis that she was elected. She pictured the incorrigible Allan Jarvis spending the Sabbath in the invention of mischief. It had come too suddenly. She could not realize that she was actually a Wyoming school-teacher. Now the time which she had thought to be four years’ distant had come—the time to begin to realize the ideals she had shaped for herself upon the teaching and the personality of her adored Miss Wallace.
The voices on the porch became more curious, and Mary, at last coming to herself, hurried out 207 to tell the wonderful news. She found the Vigilantes and Aunt Nan as interested as she herself, and willing to sacrifice her company for five days for the sake of Bear Canyon’s rising generation. Priscilla offered all the proficiency in arithmetic she possessed; Aunt Nan hurried indoors to cut and make two aprons for the teacher; and Vivian and Virginia went in search of pencils and paper. This was Saturday and there was no time to lose.
On Monday morning at eight they all stood beneath the cottonwoods to watch a wide-eyed and much excited school-teacher start for Bear Canyon. In a bag which she hung on the saddle-horn were her pencils, papers, and new apron; in a package strapped to the saddle was her lunch, packed by Hannah’s interested hands; and in her heart were excitement, misgivings, and eagerness. She preferred to go alone, she said, as she mounted into the saddle. They might ride up at four, and come home with her if they liked, but she must go alone.
They did go up that afternoon at four—Vivian, Priscilla, and Virginia. As they swung around a 208 bend in the road, and came upon the little school-house, they were surprised at the stillness. Where was everybody? The children had not gone home—that was certain—for half a dozen horses were picketed round about. Had the school adjourned and gone for a picnic in the woods? That would not be unlike the new teacher, but it would be very unlike the former traditions of the Bear Canyon school. No sound came from within and it was long past four. Had the big Jarvis boy triumphed after all, and made Mary a prisoner?
After five minutes of patient, puzzled waiting they added their horses to those already grazing among the sagebrush, and stole quietly to the open window. The new teacher sat in the middle of the battered, scarred, ugly little room. She held her two youngest children upon her lap much to the detriment of her new apron. A dirty eager face was raised to hers from either side of her chair. The others of her twenty charges sat as near as the seats would permit. The big Jarvis boy had not deigned to move toward the front—that was too much of a concession for the first day—but 209 he was leaning forward in his seat, his big, shaggy, unkempt head resting in his folded arms, his eyes never leaving Mary’s face. She was telling them the story of the Dog of Flanders. The Vigilantes, crouching beneath the window, heard her as she finished.
“The next day,” she said, “they came to the great cathedral, and found Nello and Patrasche dead upon the stone floor. People were sorry then. Alois’ father was one who came. He realized how cruel he had been to Nello, and was ready now to help him. But it was too late. Little Alois came also. She begged Nello to wake and come home for the Christmas festivities, and cried when she saw that he could not. Then a great artist came. He had seen Nello’s picture of the old man on the fallen tree, and he knew that some day Nello might become a wonderful painter, even though another had won the Antwerp prize. He wanted to take Nello away with him, he said, and teach him art. But he, also, was too late, for Nello and Patrasche had gone away together to a Kinder Country. All their lives they had not been separated, and so 210 the people of their little village, sorry and ashamed, made them one grave and laid them to rest together.”
There was a silence in the Bear Canyon school-house until a little girl in a pink apron sobbed. Sobs were at a discount in Bear Canyon, and yet strangely enough no one laughed. Allan Jarvis, in the back seat, was intent upon his finger-nails. The others were gazing admiringly at their new teacher.
“It’s such a sad story,” said the little girl, using her pink apron for a handkerchief, “but I like it all the same.”
“Deary me!” cried the new teacher, depositing the two littlest ones on the floor, “it’s half-past four! We must close school at once!”
At that the big Jarvis boy left his seat and came down the aisle, for the first time in his life abstaining from pulling the hair of the girls nearest him.
“Shan’t I get your horse ready for you, ma’am?” he asked.
The new teacher smiled gratefully upon him. 211
“If you please, Allan,” she said. “I’ll be ever so much obliged.” And Allan Jarvis departed for the horse sheds—a conquered hero!
Mary, tired but enthusiastic, told them all about it as they rode home together, followed at a respectful distance by a dinner-pail laden throng. How she had arrived that morning to find Allan Jarvis the center of a mischief-bent circle; how she had begun the day by the most exciting shipwreck story she knew; and how the promise of another story before four o’clock had worked a miracle. They were starved for stories, she said. She thought they needed them more than arithmetic.
“Besides,” she added, “probably the Sheridan person knows all about figures. I’m going to put all the arithmetic classes the last thing in the afternoon, and if we don’t get around to them, why all right. It’s unfortunate, of course, but it can’t be helped.”
One day was quite sufficient to establish the name and the fame of the Bear Canyon school-teacher. Around every supper-table circled tales of her wisdom, her beauty, her strange way of speaking, and 212 her general superiority over any teacher Bear Canyon had ever hired. Her ability to tell stories was lauded to the skies, and her genius at making six hitherto mercilessly long hours seem like three marvelously short ones was freely advertised. History under this new teacher had become something more than a dog-eared text-book; geography more than stained and torn wall-maps; reading more than a torturesome process of making sounds. They proudly told their parents what the Constitution of the United States had looked like when their teacher had last seen it; the size and shape of Plymouth Rock as recorded by her during her last visit there. They re-told her stories one by one to the children at home, too young for school. Allan Jarvis did his part. He told his father he would go to school without a word, if the new teacher could be persuaded to stay in Bear Canyon.
Because of this Mr. Benjamin Jarvis left his work the third day, put on a clean shirt, and visited the school himself. Mr. Samuel Wilson joined him, as did the third trustee from farther up the canyon. When these three gentlemen entered, the 213 oldest History class was engaged in reproducing the trial of Nathan Hale, the leading man in the cast being the big Jarvis boy. It was a novel method of teaching history, the trustees said to themselves, remembering the barren instruction they had received, but it seemed effectual. That night they offered the new teacher a permanent job in Bear Canyon. The teacher in Sheridan was not over-anxious to come, they said, and the position was Mary’s if she cared to accept it.
But Mary was going to college, she explained to the disappointed trustees. Perhaps, some day, she would come back—some day when she had learned more about teaching. As it was, Friday night must end her labors, grateful as she was, and happy as she felt over the reception Bear Canyon had given her.
It came all too soon—Friday night. The children stood in a disconsolate little group to bid her good-by. They knew Bear Canyon teachers of old. There would be no more stories, no more circuses at recess, no more flower hunts in the woods, no more plays. School now would become just a weary 214 succession of days—all pointing toward Saturday. Figures would take the place of reading, and the Rhine would again be just a crooked, black line, not a river surmounted by frowning castles and golden with legends.
The little girl in the pink apron again used it as a handkerchief as Mary rode down the trail.
“I—I’d go to school all my life—with her!” she said loyally.
The school-teacher halted at the residence of Mr. Benjamin Jarvis, second trustee. He it was who was to sign the check for her services, give to her the very first money she had ever earned. He was waiting for her, the check in his hand.
“I—I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Jarvis,” said Mary, “especially since you’re strong on figures in Bear Canyon, that I haven’t taught many this week. I’m afraid I’m very weak on system. That will be one of the things I’ll have to learn in college, I guess. The days have gone so fast I just haven’t seemed to have time to get them in. And—and to tell the truth, Mr. Jarvis, I’m not very strong on figures myself.” 215
“Figures!” said Mr. Benjamin Jarvis as he shook hands with her. “I guess you’ve given that boy o’ mine somethin’ better’n figures, God bless you!”
The boy himself came around the house just as Mary was mounting her horse to ride away. He had left school before the others, and had said no good-by. Now he came up to her, a brown paper parcel in his hand.
“It’s a rattlesnake skin I fixed for you,” he said shyly. “You said you liked ’em once. And the heavy thing in the end’s my jack-knife. I carved your letters on the handle. I thought it might come in handy when you went to college.”